Re: Trimming down of /var/log/messages

[Olaf Meeuwissen <olaf@epkowa.co.jp>]

USM Bish <bish@nde.vsnl.net.in> writes:

> With time, the size of /var/log/messages keeps on growing,
> till it really becomes really huge, with information no
> longer needed. Since syslogd is constantly monitoring and writing on to
> it, I have never attempted initialising a fresh /var/log/messages on a
> running machine.
> 
> Is there a recommended way wherein I keep the log for the
> last seven days only, with some process at boot-up or cron ?

Seems like logrotate will fit your bill.

  Package: logrotate
  Priority: important
  Section: admin
  Conffiles:
   /etc/logrotate.conf 70593fe48cb39133328b42a560b5a8cf
  Description: Log rotation utility
   The logrotate utility is designed to simplify the administration of
   log files on a system which generates a lot of log files.
   Logrotate allows for the automatic rotation compression, removal
   and mailing of log files.  Logrotate can be set to handle a log
   file daily, weekly, monthly or when the log file gets to a certain
   size.  Normally, logrotate runs as a daily cron job.

-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen       Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development